Google Pays More Than Facebook, Apple

Published June 7, 2011•Updated on December 20, 2012 at 9:15 pm

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Google's starting salary beats out Facebook by $23,000 and Apple by $40,000, according to a recent pay survey.

Google's median starting salary is $82,600, significantly higher than Facebook's $59,100 and Apple's anemic $43,100, according to salary information site Payscale.com. Still, Microsoft edges out the search giant with a starting salary of $86,900, the Seattle Times reported. Also from the report, Amazon pays $72,200, Intel pays $80,100 and HP offers $55,100.

However, once workers are mid-career, Google beats them all with a whopping $141,000 a year, compared to $127,000 for Microsoft (because Facebook is such a young company, that number is N/A on the report.) Amazon is $110,000, Intel pays $104,000 and Hewlett-Packard is $91,600.

Other interesting findings include that Facebook's median worker age is 26, the youngest in the report. Google's median worker age is 31, Amazon's is 34 and Microsoft's is 35. Intel's median age is 38 and HP seems geriatric at 44. Facebook also has the highest rate of female workers -- 33 percent.

Stock options don't factor into the pay results, said Al Lee, Payscale's director of quantitative analysis, and some company policies can cause lower median salaries, such as Apple employing an in-house support staff unlike many big tech companies.

“Apple may have a bunch more designers and Web marketers on staff than some of the other companies, and that might pay less,” Lee told Bloomberg News.

Ugh, we hate when titles like "designer" seem artistic and therefore deserve less money than one like "engineer" and people like Lee buy into it. That said, it's likely that Google's higher median salaries are probably going to software engineers and mobile programmers in an attempt to compete against the ever-encroaching Facebook.